Just a suggestion, but maybe you could write an article about generating traffic to a brand new blog. As you know, when you start out, you have only a couple posts and very little credibility with other bloggers, also the search engines will take considerable time to be of any benefit initially. Would be interesting to know how Brian Dean approaches that dilemma!

Regarding internal linking, i believe that in the case of two links pointing to an internal page, being one of those links in the group i mentioned above, they will considered only the one witch feed the algorithm with more information. In sites that have the menu before the content, it will be the second link. I think that’s the smart way for them to analyse all the links to better understand the destination page content. And they are smart 😉 .

We expect advertisements to be visible. However, you should not let the advertisements distract users or prevent them from consuming the site content. For example, advertisements, supplement contents, or interstitial pages (pages displayed before or after the content you are expecting) that make it difficult to use the website. Learn more about this topic.38

I consulted a few years ago before Yahoo and CNET and my clients were all small businesses, even friends' sites. No matter the size of the project, you can still try to get some insight into your target audiences and what they need or want. I mentioned in a previous comment I used Search once to determine sentiment on a site vs. it's competitors by searching for a feature the site and its competitors all had, along with "like", "love", "hate", "wish", etc. I also took note of who the people were who said those things and where they were talking (forums, twitter, etc). It's a hacked manual approach and although not nearly as quality as a good market research report, at least I have a llittle bit of insight before going out to make site recommendations based solely on tags & links. If you're recommending the site build things that people want (and fix or remove things that they dont), you're more likely to gain links and traffic naturally.
Reality bites. You could draft up an amazing strategy, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to which you're rebuilding an entire category structure of one of the website's most lucrative lines... only to find out there's a ticket queue for the necessary resources that's more than 6 months long. Despite your brilliant idea, you're going to look bad when the client calls you out on not understanding their business.
Content gaps – make an inventory of the site’s key content assets, are they lacking any foundational/cornerstone content pieces, non-existent content types, or relevant topic areas that haven’t been covered? What topics or content are missing from your competitors? Can you beat your competitors’ information-rich content assets? Useful guides on Content Gap Analysis:
Thanks for sharing these great tips last August! I’ve recently adopted them and I have a question (that’s kind of connected to the last post): how important would promoting content be when using this strategy? For example, through Google Adwords. As I guess that would depend on the circumstances, but I am trying to discover if there’s a ‘formula’ here. Thanks in advance!
Content gaps – make an inventory of the site’s key content assets, are they lacking any foundational/cornerstone content pieces, non-existent content types, or relevant topic areas that haven’t been covered? What topics or content are missing from your competitors? Can you beat your competitors’ information-rich content assets? Useful guides on Content Gap Analysis:
Companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[15] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[16] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[17]
I am a little confused on your first point. Sorry if it is a simple one to understand and I’m just missing it. What good would finding dead links on Wiki do for my personal website? I thought you would explain how to find dead links faster within my own site… but it seems that your tip is way more valuable than that. I just don’t quite understand what I do to positively affect MY site with this. Any help would be great 🙂 THANKS!

Although this is a step-by-step series, everyone's methods will (and should) vary, so it really depends on how much time you think it will take (if you're billing hourly). What tools do you have at your disposal vs. how much researching for information will you have to do on your own? Will you have to pay for research reports or companies? Do you pay a monthly service for data or research?

Having an industry influencer publish a blog post on your site or turning an interview with them into a blog post can help to drive traffic both through organic search but also via that influencer promoting the content to their audience (see the backlinks section above). This can also help to add more variety to your content and show your visitors that you are active in your field.

The idea of “link bait” refers to creating content that is so extremely useful or entertaining it compels people to link to it. Put yourself in the shoes of your target demographic and figure out what they would enjoy or what would help them the most. Is there a tool you can make to automate some tedious process? Can you find enough data to make an interesting infographic? Is there a checklist or cheat sheet that would prove handy to your audience? The possibilities are nearly endless – survey your visitors and see what is missing or lacking in your industry and fill in the gaps.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black or grey hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.[54] Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's search engine results page.[55]

Before you say it – no, true guest blogging isn’t dead, despite what you may have heard. Securing a guest post on a reputable site can increase blog traffic to your website and help build your brand into the bargain. Be warned, though – standards for guest blogging have changed radically during the past eighteen months, and spammy tactics could result in stiff penalties. Proceed with caution.

Hey Brian, love your site + content. Really awesome stuff! I have a question about dead link building on Wikipedia. I actually got a “user talk” message from someone moderating a Wikipedia page I replaced a dead link on. They claimed that “Wikipedia uses nofollow tags” so “additions of links to Wikipedia will not alter search engine rankings.” Any thoughts here?

Although this is a step-by-step series, everyone's methods will (and should) vary, so it really depends on how much time you think it will take (if you're billing hourly). What tools do you have at your disposal vs. how much researching for information will you have to do on your own? Will you have to pay for research reports or companies? Do you pay a monthly service for data or research?

Your posts are amazingly right on target. In this specific post, #3 resonated with with personally. I am a content manager as well as a blogger for the website mentioned. I promote through different blog sites and social media. In fact, i just finished an article about you. Credited to you and your website of course. Thank you for such amazing information. You make things sound so easy. Thanks again!
Hey Ted, thanks for the great questions! The peak times refer to your particular time zone, if you are targeting an audience that resides in the same zone as you. You can also use tools to find out when most of your audience is online. For example, Facebook has this built into their Page Insights. For Twitter, you can use https://followerwonk.com/. Many social posting tools also offer this functionality.
Bill, a very creative and interesting way to show the difference between the tactics and the strategies in order to make clarity on what needs to be done and how. I totally agree and I have experienced that most companies complicate both these things. Also, one definitely skip to discuss or pinpoint the SMART goals. We need to derive the SMART goals and it is one of our prime responsibilities to discuss it with the company for which we are building SEO strategies.
Hi Brain, I am a young business owner who has had 4 different websites in the last 2 years but none of them were successful as I would have liked due to lack of SEO. Now I am in process of starting another business and I felt it was time for me to learn about SEO myself. I must say the information you have provided is invaluable and extremely helpful!! I am learning on the go and you are my biggest contributor. Thank you Sir!
Hi! I really found this article to be valuable and helpful to improve our SEO techniques. But I am just wondering regarding the dead links, does that mean we can contact those who have dead links to recreate the page? How does it improve my SEO technique for my website? Can they add some citations or thank you or gratitude section that links to our website?
Great article. My site has been up for several years now but I rebranded and switched from Blogger to WordPress about a year ago because I was told the reason why my traffic is so low is because I was using the wrong platform. I still haven’t seen an increase in my traffic and am very frustrated. I write in the health, fitness and parenting niche and I have over 30 experts that write for me, but I still don’t have the page views I would like. My paychecks are small and I am very frustrated. How do I find out what influencers in my niche are talking about and what they would like to share? I read tons of blogs, but most of them just review products or write about their kids, not a whole lot of similar articles. Where do I begin to find sharable content in my niche?
Hi Brain, I am a young business owner who has had 4 different websites in the last 2 years but none of them were successful as I would have liked due to lack of SEO. Now I am in process of starting another business and I felt it was time for me to learn about SEO myself. I must say the information you have provided is invaluable and extremely helpful!! I am learning on the go and you are my biggest contributor. Thank you Sir!
Hey Ted, thanks for the great questions! The peak times refer to your particular time zone, if you are targeting an audience that resides in the same zone as you. You can also use tools to find out when most of your audience is online. For example, Facebook has this built into their Page Insights. For Twitter, you can use https://followerwonk.com/. Many social posting tools also offer this functionality.
A navigational page is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit this page, getting good crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.
The intent behind “SEO agency” is obvious… The searcher is looking for an SEO agency. Most of these searchers aren’t looking for life lessons from an SEO agency owner. Instead, they are just looking for the best SEO agency to get them more traffic and customers from Google. Plain and simple. I knew this when I created that page, but my SEO ego was too big.
Creating high quality content takes a significant amount of at least one of the following: time, effort, expertise, and talent/skill. Content should be factually accurate, clearly written, and comprehensive. So, for example, if you describe your page as a recipe, provide a complete recipe that is easy to follow, rather than just a set of ingredients or a basic description of the dish.